front cover of An Islamic Alliance
An Islamic Alliance
Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906-1916
Jay Spaulding and Lidwien Kapteijns
Northwestern University Press, 1994
An Islamic Alliance uses non-European sources to portray the defense, by devoutly Islamic leaders, of some of the last parts of the African continent to be conquered during the imperial European "scramble for Africa" that ended with the First World War. These surviving pieces of diplomatic correspondence concentrate on the alliance between Ali Dinar, prince of the sultanate of Dar Fur in the western Sudan, and the leaders of the Sanusi brotherhood then based in southern Libya. In contrast to the European view of the alliance as ephemeral, the documents indicate a sincere, passionate attempt to join--despite immense physical difficulties--an ancient monarchist tradition to a more modern, trade-based sociopolitical organization.
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front cover of Public Documents from Sinnar
Public Documents from Sinnar
Jay Spaulding
Michigan State University Press, 1989

This selection of Arabic and English translations illuminates the changes of eighteenth-century government in the northern Nile Valley of Sudan, and provides reliable chronological points of reference for the history of the region.  
      The documents offered in this volume, including charter grants of land and privilege, administrative letters, judicial rulings, and other official government records, date form 1702 to 1820. This period marks the apogee of the wealth, power, and geographical extent of the realm of the Funji kings of Sinnar who reigned over much of the Sudan from about 1500 until the Turkish colonial conquest of 1821.  
      These records document with concrete precision and eloquence the dissolution of the agrarian social order of an old African kingdom under the corroding influence of intrusive Mediterranean commercial practices and culture. They reveal the Sudan's legacy of a traditionally weak government vulnerable to manipulation or conquest by foreign powers and a divided and impoverished society dominated by a minority of urban interests.

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